"If a tree falls it makes a lot of noise, but if a forest grows no one hears a thing."
Pope Benedict XVI
July 31, 2007
The Sound of Silence
"If a tree falls it makes a lot of noise, but if a forest grows no one hears a thing."
July 27, 2007
Nothing To Rebel Against, Nothing To Believe In.
In Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Academy Award–winning film The Lives of Others. The villain Minister Hempf, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, muses “What a strange new country. Nothing to rebel against, nothing to believe in.” A powerful statement reflecting a symptom of post–Cold War emptiness—like many of his friends, his identity until now has been oppositional, against the regime. Now the regime is gone. Implicit in Hempf’s sneer are the questions being raised over the essence of Western identity.
July 23, 2007
Einstein and Mystery
“Mystery” the way that Albert Einstein used the word: the sense that “behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly.” A scientist’s work relies on the premise that reality is intelligible, and for Einstein such intelligibility does not nullify Mystery.
Why Dictators Fear Artists
First Things Blog
By Santiago Ramos
Monday, July 23, 2007
Why Dictators Fear Artists
First Things Blog
By Santiago Ramos
Monday, July 23, 2007
July 18, 2007
A Spirituality of Non-Hurrying
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser on Spirituality and our approach to Time:
May 9, 2004
"Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried." Thoreau wrote that and it's not meant as something trivial.
We hurry too much, pure and simple. As Henri Nouwen describes it: "One of the most obvious characteristics of our daily lives is that we are busy. We experience our days as filled with things to do, people to meet, projects to finish, letters to write, calls to make, and appointments to keep. Our lives often seem like overpacked suitcases bursting at the seams. It fact, we are almost always aware of being behind schedule. There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals. There is always something else that we should have remembered, done, or said. There are always people we did not speak to, write to, or visit. Thus, although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligation." We are always hurrying.
What's wrong with hurrying? Any doctor, police officer, spiritual director, or over-worked mother, can answer that: Hurrying causes tension, high blood-pressure, accidents, and robs us of the simple capacity to be in the moment.
But spiritual writers take this further. They see hurry as an obstacle to spiritual growth. Donald Nicholl, for example, says "hurry is a form of violence exercised upon time", an attempt, as it were, to make time God's time our own, our private property. What he and others suggest is that, in hurrying, we exercise a form of greed and gluttony? How so?
Too often we have a rather simplistic notion of greed and gluttony. We imagine greed, for example, as hoarding money and possessions, as being selfish, hard-hearted, like Scrooge in the Dicken's Christmas tale. Indeed, that kind of greed exists, though it's not the prerogative of many. For most of us, greed takes a different, more subtle form. More than money, we hoard experience. We try to drink in the world, all of it. We would like to travel to every place, see everything, feel every sensation, not miss out on anything. We constantly hurry what we're doing so as to be available to do something else. We try to juggle too many things at the same time precisely because we want too many things. The possessions we really want are experience, knowledge, sensation, achievement, status. We're greedy in a way Scrooge never was.
Gluttony works essentially the same. For most of us, the urge to consume is not so much about food or drink, but about experience. Our propensity to over-eat (particularly in an age that is so sensitive to health and fashion) generally has little to do with food and infinitely more to do with other kinds of consumption. We are always in a hurry because we are forever restless to taste more of life.
It's this kind of hurry, subtly driven by greed and gluttony, that can be a form of violence exercised upon time and can constitute an obstacle to holiness.
But there are other kinds of hurry that come from simple circumstance and duty. Almost everyone of us, at least during our working years, have too many things to do: Daily, we struggle to juggle the demands of relationships, family, work, school, church, child-care, shopping, attention to health, concern for appearance, house-work, preparing meals, rent and mortgage payments, car payments, commuting to and from work, bus schedules, unwanted accidents, unforeseen interruptions, illnesses, and countless other things that eat up more time than is seemingly available.
The gospels tell us that even Jesus was so busy at times that he didn't have time to eat. That's not surprising. Robert Moore once said that the mark of a true adult is that "he or she does what it takes". Sometimes that means being stretched to the limit, being over-extended, having to juggle too many things all at once, driving faster than we'd like, working to the point of exhaustion, even as there is still more that we should ideally be doing.
There's a hurriedness that doesn't come from greed or gluttony and that can't be dismissed with the simplistic judgement: "That's what she gets for trying to have it all!" Sometimes we have to hurry just to make do and simple circumstance and duty eat up every available minute of our time. That's not necessarily an obstacle to holiness, but can be one of its paths.
Still we have to be careful not to rationalize. God didn't make a mistake in creating time, God made enough of it, and when we can't find enough time and, as the Psalmist says, find ourselves getting up ever earlier and going to bed ever later because we have too much to do, we need to see this as a sign that sooner or later we had better make some changes. When we hurry too much and for too long we end up doing violence to time, to ourselves, and to our blood pressure.
May 9, 2004
"Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried." Thoreau wrote that and it's not meant as something trivial.
We hurry too much, pure and simple. As Henri Nouwen describes it: "One of the most obvious characteristics of our daily lives is that we are busy. We experience our days as filled with things to do, people to meet, projects to finish, letters to write, calls to make, and appointments to keep. Our lives often seem like overpacked suitcases bursting at the seams. It fact, we are almost always aware of being behind schedule. There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals. There is always something else that we should have remembered, done, or said. There are always people we did not speak to, write to, or visit. Thus, although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligation." We are always hurrying.
What's wrong with hurrying? Any doctor, police officer, spiritual director, or over-worked mother, can answer that: Hurrying causes tension, high blood-pressure, accidents, and robs us of the simple capacity to be in the moment.
But spiritual writers take this further. They see hurry as an obstacle to spiritual growth. Donald Nicholl, for example, says "hurry is a form of violence exercised upon time", an attempt, as it were, to make time God's time our own, our private property. What he and others suggest is that, in hurrying, we exercise a form of greed and gluttony? How so?
Too often we have a rather simplistic notion of greed and gluttony. We imagine greed, for example, as hoarding money and possessions, as being selfish, hard-hearted, like Scrooge in the Dicken's Christmas tale. Indeed, that kind of greed exists, though it's not the prerogative of many. For most of us, greed takes a different, more subtle form. More than money, we hoard experience. We try to drink in the world, all of it. We would like to travel to every place, see everything, feel every sensation, not miss out on anything. We constantly hurry what we're doing so as to be available to do something else. We try to juggle too many things at the same time precisely because we want too many things. The possessions we really want are experience, knowledge, sensation, achievement, status. We're greedy in a way Scrooge never was.
Gluttony works essentially the same. For most of us, the urge to consume is not so much about food or drink, but about experience. Our propensity to over-eat (particularly in an age that is so sensitive to health and fashion) generally has little to do with food and infinitely more to do with other kinds of consumption. We are always in a hurry because we are forever restless to taste more of life.
It's this kind of hurry, subtly driven by greed and gluttony, that can be a form of violence exercised upon time and can constitute an obstacle to holiness.
But there are other kinds of hurry that come from simple circumstance and duty. Almost everyone of us, at least during our working years, have too many things to do: Daily, we struggle to juggle the demands of relationships, family, work, school, church, child-care, shopping, attention to health, concern for appearance, house-work, preparing meals, rent and mortgage payments, car payments, commuting to and from work, bus schedules, unwanted accidents, unforeseen interruptions, illnesses, and countless other things that eat up more time than is seemingly available.
The gospels tell us that even Jesus was so busy at times that he didn't have time to eat. That's not surprising. Robert Moore once said that the mark of a true adult is that "he or she does what it takes". Sometimes that means being stretched to the limit, being over-extended, having to juggle too many things all at once, driving faster than we'd like, working to the point of exhaustion, even as there is still more that we should ideally be doing.
There's a hurriedness that doesn't come from greed or gluttony and that can't be dismissed with the simplistic judgement: "That's what she gets for trying to have it all!" Sometimes we have to hurry just to make do and simple circumstance and duty eat up every available minute of our time. That's not necessarily an obstacle to holiness, but can be one of its paths.
Still we have to be careful not to rationalize. God didn't make a mistake in creating time, God made enough of it, and when we can't find enough time and, as the Psalmist says, find ourselves getting up ever earlier and going to bed ever later because we have too much to do, we need to see this as a sign that sooner or later we had better make some changes. When we hurry too much and for too long we end up doing violence to time, to ourselves, and to our blood pressure.
July 13, 2007
Intelligent Design of the Universe
In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi (1962, pg. 33) considers stones placed in a garden. In one instance the stones spell “Welcome to Wales by British Railways,” in the other they appear randomly strewn. In both instances, the precise arrangement of the stones is vastly improbable. Indeed, any given arrangement of stones is but one of almost infinite possible arrangements. Nonetheless, arrangements of stones that spell coherent English sentences form but a miniscule proportion of the total possible arrangements of stones. The improbability of such arrangements is not properly referred to chance.
What is the difference between a randomly strewn arrangement and one that spells a coherent English sentence? Improbability, by itself, isn’t decisive. In addition what’s needed is conformity to a pattern. When stones spell a coherent English sentence, they conform to a pattern. When they are randomly strewn, no pattern is evident. But herein lies a difficulty. Everything conforms to some pattern or other –even a random arrangement of stones. The crucial question, therefore, is whether an arrangement of stones conforms to the right sort of pattern to eliminate chance.
(William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, pg. xi (Cambridge University Press, 1998), emphases added.
What is the difference between a randomly strewn arrangement and one that spells a coherent English sentence? Improbability, by itself, isn’t decisive. In addition what’s needed is conformity to a pattern. When stones spell a coherent English sentence, they conform to a pattern. When they are randomly strewn, no pattern is evident. But herein lies a difficulty. Everything conforms to some pattern or other –even a random arrangement of stones. The crucial question, therefore, is whether an arrangement of stones conforms to the right sort of pattern to eliminate chance.
(William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, pg. xi (Cambridge University Press, 1998), emphases added.
July 9, 2007
Remembering
There is a custom in the Catholic Church that when a priest is ordained he produces a “holy card” to commemorate the occasion. This holy card is then distributed to family and friends as a reminder to all of the new priest’s need for prayer. I was ordained thirty years ago. The holy card I designed was a tan card with a single quote from the theologian and priest I most admire, Karl Rahner. After all these years I am still thankful for Rahner’s insights and his example. The quote follows:
My brothers and sisters, accept us
as we are; men, who like you, need the
mercy of God; poor men, weak, sinful
with faults and limited talents.
Though we are men called by God,
chosen by Him to be the servants
of the altar and your holy community;
we too grope through the darkness of the world.
All we can do is travel with
you into the light of God our Father,
who loves us, forgives us, and sends
Himself in Jesus Christ, and in the
grace of the Holy Spirit.
So you see, you must carry us, just
as we must carry you, and we can only
beg of you, pray for us, have patience
with us, carry us, accept God’s word
and His holy mysteries from us.
Karl Rahner
1904-1984
as we are; men, who like you, need the
mercy of God; poor men, weak, sinful
with faults and limited talents.
Though we are men called by God,
chosen by Him to be the servants
of the altar and your holy community;
we too grope through the darkness of the world.
All we can do is travel with
you into the light of God our Father,
who loves us, forgives us, and sends
Himself in Jesus Christ, and in the
grace of the Holy Spirit.
So you see, you must carry us, just
as we must carry you, and we can only
beg of you, pray for us, have patience
with us, carry us, accept God’s word
and His holy mysteries from us.
Karl Rahner
1904-1984
July 2, 2007
Grapling With The Good: Moral Education & Public Schools
This from Sally Thomas, a poet and homeschooling mother in Tennessee. Her opinion article “Schooling at Home” appeared in the April issue of First Things.
-----
In a class taught by one of my husband’s friends, who decided to poll the students on their views of Christian sexual morality. He was taken aback, to put it mildly, to discover that the sole moral conviction held by an overwhelming majority was that it was wrong for Christians to judge other people’s behaviors. “Sex is just a bodily function anyway,” one student said. Bear in mind that these students were self-described Christians, from Christian homes, who had chosen their college for its Christian environment. Somehow, in all their years of formation, they seemed to have missed the fairly crucial lesson that Christianity establishes clear guidelines regarding sex
If, as a correspondent of mine has suggested, Christians are impotent in engaging with secular culture, perhaps the problem is not that too many of us have withdrawn from it but that too many have surrendered our cultural distinctiveness. If we urge our children to integrate into the secular mainstream, and it turns out instead that the secular mainstream is integrated into them, then what we end up with is, well, what we largely have: a generation that believes that Christianity is only about not being judgmental.
This strikes me as a weak position from which to influence anything. If we’re called to speak the truth in love, we have to do so from the locus of a distinct Christian culture, however microcosmic, that makes readily apparent what the truth actually is and that nurtures moral courage.
-----
In a class taught by one of my husband’s friends, who decided to poll the students on their views of Christian sexual morality. He was taken aback, to put it mildly, to discover that the sole moral conviction held by an overwhelming majority was that it was wrong for Christians to judge other people’s behaviors. “Sex is just a bodily function anyway,” one student said. Bear in mind that these students were self-described Christians, from Christian homes, who had chosen their college for its Christian environment. Somehow, in all their years of formation, they seemed to have missed the fairly crucial lesson that Christianity establishes clear guidelines regarding sex
If, as a correspondent of mine has suggested, Christians are impotent in engaging with secular culture, perhaps the problem is not that too many of us have withdrawn from it but that too many have surrendered our cultural distinctiveness. If we urge our children to integrate into the secular mainstream, and it turns out instead that the secular mainstream is integrated into them, then what we end up with is, well, what we largely have: a generation that believes that Christianity is only about not being judgmental.
This strikes me as a weak position from which to influence anything. If we’re called to speak the truth in love, we have to do so from the locus of a distinct Christian culture, however microcosmic, that makes readily apparent what the truth actually is and that nurtures moral courage.
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